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Air ‘con’: Climate culture war heats up as temperatures rise

Air ‘con’: Climate culture war heats up as temperatures rise

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While millions work in stifling heat, the capitalists have been busy pitting climate activists against ordinary people. They attack air conditioning and maximum working temperatures, while we suffer with wildfires and broken water systems.

While countless families, schools, hospitals, and workplaces struggle to cope in this summer’s scorching temperatures, the capitalists are taking the opportunity to pit climate activists against ordinary people.

There have been three heatwaves in Britain since 1 May. In May and June alone, 2,877 people are estimated to have died due to extreme heat. Several regions have seen their hottest and driest July days ever recorded.

These sustained and elevated temperatures have led to a surge in demand for air conditioning, in homes and businesses. The UK has seen a 249 percent rise in demand for aircon units since 1 May. Going further back, the number of air-conditioned homes in Britain has doubled in the last four years.

But the burning question is: who will pay the bill for keeping workers cool; for making our living and working conditions safe?

Of course, the bosses, bankers, and landlords don’t want to foot the cost for this. That is why some bourgeois commentators are cynically casting doubts about the need for air conditioning – whipping up a climate culture war over this question.

“Is [air conditioning] a central protection against extreme heat,” certain media outlets ask, “or a luxury the planet cannot afford?”

But ordinary people suffering in stifling heat know this is only penny pinching from the bosses. The rich and powerful have never given a damn about protecting the planet.

In fact, in the US air conditioning is the norm, and they have more productive workers for it! Besides small businesses worried about the operational costs, many commentators in favour of big business want air conditioning to improve productivity. Clearly, the ruling class is cynical no matter which side they choose – either way, they want profit without investment.

Costly investments

Those concerned about climate change point to the energy needed for widespread air conditioning, alongside the heat it pumps out of buildings, into the surrounding environment. Many argue that this would significantly worsen the ‘urban heat island effect’ in cities. And this, in turn, could provoke a vicious cycle where even more cooling is required.

This is all true. Currently, buildings and the man-made environment are responsible for 28 percent of global carbon emissions, second only to energy production. Up to 75 percent of this relates to ‘operational’ emissions: that associated with heating, air conditioning, water circulation, lighting, etc., as opposed to the CO2 associated with construction.

Britain, meanwhile, has the worst housing stock in Europe in terms of building standards, insulation, and internal conditions. This means it is exceptionally expensive to run in terms of winter heating or summer cooling.

The technology and techniques exist to address these problems – to improve and upgrade the country’s buildings. But constructing new sustainable homes; adapting old ones; installing cooling systems; and regulating temperatures in public buildings: all of this requires serious long-term investment.

This is an unattractive prospect for parasitic landlords and big business – especially compared to the short-term profits that can be made through speculation in property and stocks.

And so, as usual, it is the working class that is being made to front the cost for these vital outlays.

Green austerity

The list of environmental costs loaded onto workers’ shoulders goes on and on. Many European countries have banned gas boilers, meaning households are required to fork out thousands of euros to install a heat pump. In Italy, meanwhile, the government enforces a standardised heating schedule, with fines of up to €3,000 for those who don’t comply.

Back in Britain, commuters face charges relating to London’s ULEZ scheme. And some families have been ordered by local councils to remove ‘ugly’ external air-con units, in favour of ‘using curtains’.

Across our public services, teachers and patients are amongst those enduring blistering heat, due to the chronic underfunding of the country’s schools and hospitals.

Thousands of schools have been forced to close because they lack adequate preparation for coping with heatwaves that put children at risk. This, in turn, impacts the educational crisis that young people face.

Plenty of measures could be enacted to help. But these all require funding, alongside full assessments of existing buildings and their climate-control systems, which can take over a year and a half.

In the meantime, many are turning to community funding to provide shading, trees, and fans locally. But this leaves the poorest areas even further behind. And the same is true for workplaces.

All of these examples, in essence, amount to various forms of green austerity: making workers bear the burden for the climate crisis – a crisis caused by the capitalists, but endured and paid for by the working class.

No wonder there has been such a backlash to all the environmental costs, taxes, and regulations heaped onto the backs of ordinary workers, in Britain and internationally.

Planning vs Profit

So what is the way forward? How do we cut across the climate culture war, tackle the climate catastrophe, reduce emissions and save the planet; all while ensuring that workers and their families are not burdened with unbearable costs?

When it comes to cooling, architects and built-environment experts often point to ‘passive’ solutions: towers or chimneys that increase airflow and cool buildings without using energy; constructing basements under buildings to naturally provide cool air from below; and other supposedly ‘simple’ measures and designs.

Such long-term solutions are desirable. Unfortunately, however, within the confines of capitalism, the proposals coming from these architects and engineers are utopian.

Beautiful, sustainable buildings are all well and good, but how do we fund them? Similarly, how would existing housing be retrofitted and upgraded – or bulldozed and rebuilt – en masse without a centralised plan? And, within the confines of profit and private ownership, how is the necessary infrastructure, urban environment, and utility networks going to be built?

Under capitalism, architectural ‘solutions’ alone don’t cut the mustard. Even if people wanted to implement such proposals, they are often not in a position to do so. Renters cannot make major changes to properties. Meanwhile, fat-cat landlords and property developers will either sit on their hands, or push the cost for any big investments or adaptation onto individual tenants and homeowners, who already face a cost-of-living crisis.

We cannot rely on piecemeal, sporadic measures. Instead, we need mass action and large-scale change, paid for by those responsible for this crisis.

Our buildings should be in the hands of workers and residents, not profiteering businessmen and landlords, and the slimy politicians they have in their pockets.

To prevent heat deaths; provide comfortable homes for everyone; and ensure decent, safe healthcare, education, and workplaces, we must be in control of our own destines: planning the economy, democratically, on the basis of our needs, not their profits.

Burnham’s Labour rejects maximum working temperatures during record heat

Jack Patterson, Cambridge

In May, the UK’s Climate Change Committee recommended that the government finally set legal maximum workplace temperatures. This would enshrine in law the basic right for workers to operate in safe and comfortable conditions.

Rather than working tirelessly to implement this basic right, however, Labour has talked vaguely about ensuring legislation is ‘modern’.

It may come as a surprise that such legislation doesn’t already exist. After all, countries all over the world have maximum working temperature laws. Spain sets a limit of 27°C for sedentary office work and 25°C for light physical work.

Even animals have more rights than British workers when it comes to temperatures: EU law sets limits for transporting livestock!

Some politicians have been bolder. Green MP Hannah Spencer is pushing a bill to establish an ‘independent body’ to make recommendations to the government regarding maximum workplace temperatures. But sweltering workers need more than ‘recommendations’ – we need action!

This is a common pattern. Capitalism produces crises – in this case, a climate crisis. Ordinary people are forced to bear the consequences of the bosses’ polluting; compelled to work in extreme heat. We’re then forced to grovel to capitalist politicians for legislation to protect ourselves from this barbarism of capitalism’s creation. And even if we are granted these rights, they can easily be snatched away by Parliament, which can change laws as it suits them and their corporate masters.

As with all of the rights we have, lasting protection for workers can only be gained through collective action and class struggle.

The conditions we work in should not be subject to anybody but ourselves! Nobody knows better than workers themselves the working conditions they need!

That is why we need workers’ control in all workplaces, as part of a socialist society, where workers are not compelled to labour for the demands of greedy bosses.

A world on fire (literally)

Fraser Rourke, Edinburgh

This summer, a huge wildfire has burned across Cairngorms, Scotland. Park bosses called the scenes “apocalyptic” after they began on 15 July, destroying around 10 square miles of forestry and moorland.

The incompetence of the Scottish government has been on full display. One Scottish MP accused the SNP-led administration of having “failed to treat the situation with the seriousness and attention that it deserves”.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service had a lack of funding for their own helicopter support, for example, and was forced to rely on private companies. This is after an evacuation was called ‘last minute’, leaving the elderly and those with disabilities vulnerable. Many even paid out of pocket for accommodation due to a lack of planning from the authorities.

This comes right after the second major fire at Arthur’s Seat in the last three months – a seemingly commonplace occurrence now. At the same time, wildfires are raging across western Europe, which have seen over 330,000 people evacuated.

As the climate crisis deepens, heatwaves and wildfires are becoming more frequent. And capitalism continues to worsen the crisis.

Fossil fuel companies are making record profits. Many industries are built on destroying the planet. Competing nation states always look for the cheapest sources of fuel. We need to eradicate the roots of this nightmare: the anarchic profit system, and the ruling class that upholds it.

This is the only way out of this catastrophe: overthrow the system that created it, and plan the economy to suit the needs of the planet and humanity.

Water supplies dry up, but not the bosses’ profits

Alex Norris, Holloway

This summer, Britain has once again experienced widespread drought. 24 million people are living under a hosepipe ban. Excessive heat and vicious wildfires have exposed our vulnerability to the climate crisis, and highlighted our rapidly shrinking water supply.

Crop failures are threatening the UK’s already precarious food security, and are expected to get worse as summers become progressively dryer. Supermarkets, in turn, are importing more vegetables, pushing food prices up further.

Scandalously, one fifth of the precious water pumped through England’s and Wales’ pipes is lost to leaks every year. These are the only countries in the world with fully privatised water systems.

The 1989 privatisation of Britain’s water industry has led to an overall increase in bills and a drop in investment. Because of this, our creaking water system today cannot handle increased demand due to the climate crisis. In 2025, in England and Wales, water companies released raw sewage into our waterways for over 2.5 million hours.

Water bosses say that they’re finally upgrading their infrastructure. But – surprise! – consumers will have to foot the cost through higher bills.

At the same time, this year Thames Water increased its bonus payouts to senior managers to £4.1 million, paying its chief executive a bonus of £99,000. As usual, the bosses line their pockets while ordinary people pay for their failings.

Wasted water and the pollution of our waterways is not the fault of a few evil individuals, but the product of a stinking system based on profit.

Only by expropriating the water companies and placing them under democratic control can we organise our water industry to actually meet our collective needs, safeguard ourselves against climate change, and end the shameless profiteering of the capitalists forever.

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